Statistics Legislation Amendment Bill

Bills Digest No. 5 2003-04

Statistics
Legislation Amendment Bill 2003

WARNING:
This Digest was prepared for debate. It reflects the legislation as
introduced and does not canvass subsequent amendments. This Digest
does not have any official legal status. Other sources should be
consulted to determine the subsequent official status of the
Bill.

The Bill corrects a number of technical
deficiencies in statistics legislation which arose as an unintended
consequence of previous amendments to the Australian Bureau of
Statistics Act 1975 ('ABS Act').

Item 1 replaces
subsection 16(2) of the ABS Act
with a new provision designed to ensure the ability of the ABS to
engage staff for supplementary tasks. According to the Explanatory
Memorandum, Item 1 rectifies the
unintended consequence of an amendment to section 16 of the
ABS Act by the Statute Law (Miscellaneous Provisions)
Act 1987. This placed in doubt the power of the ABS
to engage staff under the Statistics Regulations.

Item 3 inserts a new
section 16A in the ABS Act to allow the
ABS to second employees from other organisations, including
agencies and authorities of Commonwealth, State and Territory
governments, foreign governments including ABS counterpart agencies
in other countries and international organisations such as the
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the
International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

Item 5 extends the definition
of an ABS 'officer' in section 3 of the
Census and Statistics Act ('CS
Act') to ensure that people seconded under new section 16A
of the ABS Act can work with information collected under the CS Act
and are subject to the stringent secrecy provisions of that
Act.

Item 6 adds new
subsection 16(2) to the CS Act preventing
people seconded to the ABS from being appointed as 'authorised
officers' with 'powers of compulsion' under the CS Act including
the ability to request that forms be
filled up or questions answered, or the authority to enter
prescribed classes of premises.

Item 7 adds new
subsection 17(1A) to the CS Act to
prevent powers of compulsion under the CS Act being delegated to
people seconded to the ABS.

Item 8 inserts new
section 19B in the CS Act to ensure that
former officers of the ABS who retired or resigned prior to 1999
are still subject to the secrecy provisions in the Act. As the
Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance and
Administration, Peter Slipper MP, noted in the Second Reading
Speech:

Deficiencies arising from amendments [to the ABS
Act] in 1987 and 1999 have placed in doubt whether all current and
former ABS staff are covered by the secrecy provisions of the
Census and Statistics Act 1905.(1)

As the Parliamentary Secretary noted,
'fundamental to the trust of the community in the ABS is the
knowledge that the ABS will protect their data and keep it
confidential.'(2)

Item 9 amends
subregulation 3(1) of the Statistics
Regulations to allow ABS staff to be employed along with
other supplementary staff for occasional intensive tasks such as
the population census and other collections.

Peter Prince
23 July 2003
Bills Digest Service
Information and Research Services

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